


The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

by blondsak



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cabin Fic, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Medical Inaccuracies, Nightmares, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Kidnapping, Protective Tony Stark, Sensory Deprivation, Tony Stark Has A Heart, defenestrating canon as per usual, sensory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondsak/pseuds/blondsak
Summary: Even as he and May raced through the hospital corridors, Tony had hoped that once the kid saw his aunt that everything would be alright. That whatever damage done from the torture Peter had been subjected to which had led to the sparse, cursed words written about him in that police report could be mended simply by their reunion.But all it had taken was watching May gather Peter into her arms and start whispering into his ear only for the kid to have no reaction—seemingly blinded, deafened, and unable to feel his aunt’s touch—and Tony’s hopes had sunk deep into the ground.Or: following a vicious kidnapping, Tony takes Peter to the cabin to recover.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 122
Kudos: 321
Collections: Irondad Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [happyaspie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyaspie/gifts).



> Written for happyaspie for the irondad fic exchange. Also the very happiest of birthdays to you, my dear!!
> 
> Huge thanks to impravidus for looking over the first chapter, and to seekrest for listening to me angst greatly and ramble on excitedly about this story in equal measure.
> 
> Note for readers: this fic includes depictions of a character dealing with temporary sensory loss. It is not meant or intended to accurately reflect the reality of those who have any form of vision impairment, hearing loss or other sensory issues. As such, please be kind and give the author some artistic leeway if you choose to read!

Tony and Peter pull up to the cabin just as the sun is hitting the treetops. It had been a quiet drive up from the city, Peter not speaking more than two words after the first ten minutes—not even to complain when Tony asked FRIDAY to play Twisted Sister’s greatest hits album. It had been a deliberate and frankly transparent attempt to prod the kid into conversation on Tony’s part, but Peter hadn’t even twitched when the opening riffs of  _ We’re Not Gonna Take It  _ came through the speakers. 

It had been enough of a sign to Tony that the kid really didn’t feel like talking, and he hadn’t so much as breathed heavily in turn the rest of the trip. Though it worried him that Peter was being so silent, he had learned long ago that pushing the teen too hard rarely produced positive results. He just had to hope the kid would open up in his own time—if not with Tony then at least with May, who Peter had promised to call twice a day while they were upstate.

Tony puts the car in park then takes out the keys, staring out at the familiar view of his old home. He and Pepper had moved back into the city just before Morgan had started kindergarten, a decision that had rested just as much on Tony wanting to be more available for Peter as it had been about their daughter’s educational opportunities. 

Too bad the proximity hadn’t made a damn bit of difference when it really counted, Tony thinks grimly. He shakes his head tightly then, willing away the guilty thoughts as best he could when he turns to look at Peter. He’s surprised to see the kid staring right back at him, face blank.

Tony grins. “What do you think, kid? Good place to rest up until you’re all better, yeah?”

Peter remains expressionless but for the tiniest of eyebrow furrows, and Tony bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from grimacing at the look of near-confusion on the teen’s face. He nearly sighs in relief when Peter finally nods at him before getting out of the car and closing the door behind him. Tony is quick to follow, the two of them going to the trunk and taking out their luggage along with several bags of groceries. 

Peter gets to the front porch before Tony, quickly inputting the door code and heading inside. Tony hears FRIDAY greet him but the kid doesn’t answer her either, and now he lets the smile finally fall. 

By the time Tony gets inside the kid had already dropped the groceries he had carried in on the kitchen counter and disappeared up the stairs to his bedroom, though Tony didn’t miss the lack of a door click from the floor above. 

Peter needs lots of space in a few different ways right now, he supposes—wondering if the boy’s claustrophobia had returned in full force in the week since… 

Again Tony pushes the negative thoughts and memories away, instead setting himself to the task of putting away all the food only to get started on dinner, having no doubt Peter must be famished. He’d barely touched his lunch at the apartment after all, and Tony knows for a  _ fact  _ the kid usually can’t get enough of May’s eggplant parmesan.

Only when the table is set and the pan of chicken and rice is laid out between the plates does Tony go over to the bottom of the stairs. 

“Food’s on, kid!” he calls up before going back into the kitchen and pouring two glasses of water, bringing them to the table. He sits down, waiting for Peter to appear—but there’s nothing. Not even the footsteps of the teen walking around.

The kid probably had his noise-canceling headphones on, Tony thinks as he gets up again, taking the stairs two at a time—something Pepper had told him sternly that he was only allowed to do when Morgan wasn’t around to try to imitate him, not feeling particularly partial to the idea of her daughter ending up with a nasty back eye or broken nose from face planting on the wooden steps, something Tony could very much agree with—and heads straight over to Peter’s room.

“Pete, what’s–”

The rest of the words die on Tony’s lip as he takes in the scene before him. The kid is sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees and head lowered into his hands. He’s trembling slightly, and Tony can see his back hitching with stilted breaths. Peter’s crying, he realizes.

“Peter?”

The kid doesn’t so much as flinch at Tony’s voice, giving no indication he even heard him—which, Tony realizes with sudden clarity, might be because he really didn’t.

“Kid? Look at me,” he says softly. 

Again there is no response, and Tony’s heart drops.

* * *

He’d been snatched from right under their noses.

It hadn’t even been all that complicated of a kidnapping—the unknown assailants opting for a simple but effective plot. Just a dart to the neck while Peter was wrestling out of his suit in an alleyway, and he was soon unconscious and quickly carried to a van. Tony watched it all on the baby monitor footage after finding his discarded tech—tech which had done nothing to protect the teen when it mattered most, just like Tony himself—in a dirty puddle. 

What had ensued were over two agonizing days in which Morgan had cried herself to sleep every night, Pepper had barely gotten a wink, and May and Tony hadn’t even bothered to try to rest no matter how much Rhodey, Steve and the others suggested it. 

During that time Tony found himself wishing more fervently than ever before that Natasha was still alive—certain she would have seen something in the scant clues that the rest of them were missing. 

Then, finally, a break came in the early hours of the third day. A report of a young man—barefoot and wearing nothing but dirtied, bloodied scrubs—found stumbling out of the woods by a concerned driver passing by, just off Highway 70 in western Pennsylvania. The presumed teenager came with the officers who responded to the call without resistance, but appeared to be completely unaware of their presence, nor was he responding to their questions. 

Brown hair, brown eyes, five-foot-nine, 155 pounds. The physical description alone would have been enough to convince Tony to send Rhodey or one of the others to check it out. But then came the kicker: the only words the boy had spoken were  _ May, Ben  _ and, occasionally,  _ Tony.  _

The quinjet was on its way within minutes. 

Tony had hoped, even as he and May had raced through the corridors of the rural hospital Peter had been taken to, that once the kid saw his aunt that everything would be alright. That whatever damage done from the torture Peter had been subjected to which had led to the sparse, cursed words written about him in that police report could be mended simply by their reunion.

But all it had taken was watching May gather Peter into her arms and start whispering into his ear only for the kid to have no reaction—seemingly blinded, deafened, and unable to feel his aunt’s touch—and Tony’s hopes had sunk deep into the ground. 

Hearing Peter’s attending doctor go over the list of mostly superficial injuries only to conclude with  _ multiple injection sites in the crook of both elbows  _ had confirmed what Tony had both assumed and detested: something external was the likely cause of Peter’s complete sensory loss. Which, as it hadn’t worked its way out of his enhanced system yet, probably meant that nothing short of a one-of-a-kind antidote would fix it.

It had taken every bit of Tony’s legal pull and sway to convince the hospital to release Peter into his aunt’s care that same night, and only after it was made clear that they would be exchanging one place of medical care for another. And so, not an hour after arriving, they had been back on the jet and on their way to the rebuilt compound’s medbay. 

Knowing he wouldn’t stop until a cure was found hadn’t made it any easier for Tony to stand by as Peter started to silently cry halfway through the journey, eyes still open and unseeing even as May tenderly kissed his brow, tears eventually running down her own face at his lack of response to her presence. 

Tony hadn’t waited around even long enough to see Peter settled in his medbay room before taking off to his labs—Helen hurriedly sending over samples of the kid’s blood. Once the substance—a toxin with a chemical make-up not far removed from Tetrodotoxin B—had been isolated, it thankfully hadn’t taken more than half a day for Bruce and himself to formulate a likely antidote that would negate the effects.

The two had hurried back upstairs and immediately handed it off to Helen, who had administered a small experimental dose into Peter’s IV. And then they all sat down and waited to see if it had worked, five, ten, fifteen minutes and counting. 

At the twenty minute mark May climbed onto the bed and cocooned Peter in her arms once more, holding her nephew close and stroking his cheek, brow, hair, arms, palms—anything to let Peter know she was there with him and to bring him back. And so it was that she was gently grazing her fingers back and forth from his shoulder to his wrist when Peter jerked, the entire room gasping as he suddenly moved his arm to grasp at her hand tightly. 

Tony had stood up just in case Peter’s grip was too tight but halted when May gave him a tight headshake, carefully moving her own hand to clasp Peter’s and give it a few squeezes. 

“May?” 

His aunt’s name was spoken so softly that it was barely audible, and Tony wasn’t certain if it had been said with any awareness, despite it being the first word of any kind Peter had spoken since just before he’d started crying on the quinjet. Luckily May clearly knew the difference, and Tony watched as she moved Peter’s fingers up to her face, the teen soon twisting around in her arms and running both hands along her cheekbones and through her hair. 

“May,” Peter said with more certainty after a while, his voice a croak from either disuse or—Tony silently cursed—screaming over the last few days, but the way his body relaxed as he curled himself around his aunt told the group everything they needed to know. Peter finally knew he was safe, and for the first time since FRIDAY had alerted Tony that the kid was missing, he let himself relax a little too.

* * *

To everyone’s disappointment, it soon became obvious that Peter wasn’t entirely physically mended yet. 

While the antidote  _ was  _ working, it unfortunately wasn’t going to be the quick fix Tony and Bruce had hoped. Over the next day the adults observed as each of Peter’s senses came back only to flicker out again. And while during the next week the length of each sensory blackout lessened from a day or longer to hours or even minutes, Bruce calculated it would be another week or two before he was fully recovered.

The task of discovering the identity of the kidnappers was equally frustrating. Peter had apparently woken up following the attack in the alley without any sensory input, if “woken up” was even a term that could be applied to having come to consciousness but with all loss of any grounding senses. As for how he had come to appear near the highway days later, all Peter would say was that he was certain he had escaped and not been let go. The Avengers had thoroughly combed the area around where the kid had been found but there had been little to indicate who had taken him or for what purpose—just a four-room underground concrete bunker a few miles from the highway that had been completely cleared out.

Although Tony was eager to find out who had taken Peter and why, he found that his attention was more focused on Peter himself. The kid was unnaturally quiet, refusing—or maybe unable—to go into any details about what had occurred during his kidnapping. Having his senses constantly going in and out was also giving him some terrible headaches that he complained of more than he spoke of anything else. Helen treated them as best she could, though she privately confided to May and Tony that she wasn’t certain if they were a physical reaction or in fact psychosomatic in nature. 

But what Peter hid behind a fake smile and few words during the day became all too painfully brought to the surface at night. The teen seemed to have near-constant nightmares, multiple times waking May—who had taken to sleeping on a second medbay bed next to Peter—with strangled screams that spoke of a horrific terror. Yet even then, trembling and sweaty, he would refuse to talk, instead just shaking his head at his aunt’s questions and turning over on his side away from her. Tony could tell how much it broke May’s heart that Peter was so closed-off, seeing the helpless look on her face when she’d informed him each morning about Peter’s nightly episodes. 

And so the status quo remained a week into Peter’s recovery, when May had taken Tony aside to let him know she could no longer put off going back to her work as head facilitator of the homeless nonprofit FEAST. Tony had fully expected her to announce she was taking Peter home, only to be quite surprised at what she said next instead.

“I was thinking, what if you took Peter to the cabin?” May asked, Tony raising his eyebrows in response. 

“The... cabin?”

“I just… I don’t think the city is the best place for him right now,” May confessed with a resigned look. “For one, I’ll be gone during the day and I really don’t want him to be alone in case something happens. Then there’s the noise, the lights—I can’t imagine any of that will help his headaches if he’s going from not being able to see or hear anything to being able to see or hear absolutely  _ everything  _ to a degree none of us can possibly comprehend. Besides, if Helen’s right and the headaches don’t have a physical cause, then the cabin could be the best place to work through things. It’ll be quiet and secluded but still completely safe, y’know?”

It wasn’t a bad plan, Tony thought, and especially now that he and Pep had moved back into the city so Morgan could attend school. Peter would be away from the compound and its many Avengers as well, something the kid seemed to crave whenever he was injured or weakened in any way, no matter how often they all reassured him there was nothing to be embarrassed about. Plus it would mean he could get outside once in a while instead of being cooped up in a cramped apartment 24/7. So yes, it wasn’t a bad plan—and yet...

“You know I’ll take him there if it’s what you want, May,” Tony finally replied, “but don’t you think he should really have you nearby? I don’t know if I’m exactly…  _ qualified _ to be the person to help Peter handle this.”

“I don’t think any of us are exactly qualified for  _ any _ of this, Tony,” May said ruefully. “But what I do know is that the only thing that truly perked Peter up this week was when I brought up the idea of going to the cabin with you, and that alone is enough to tell me that this might be what he needs right now.”

Well, there wasn’t any arguing with that, Tony supposed. “Alright, if you think so. We can head out tomorrow, same time as you.”

* * *

Looking at Peter sitting on his bed, back hitching with silent tears, Tony can’t help but wonder again if May putting him in charge of looking after the kid through the rest of his recovery had been a mistake. After all, just how long had Peter been hiding his loss of hearing and Tony hadn’t even picked up on it? Probably since shortly after they left the compound, he figures—thinking back to the way the kid hadn’t protested him playing the teen’s least favorite among all of Tony’s beloved heavy metal bands.

“Ah, Pete,” Tony whispers sadly to himself. Before Peter can look up and catch him, he slowly backs up and out of the doorway, heading back downstairs. The kid had left his bedroom door open, sure, but that doesn’t mean he had  _ wanted _ Tony to see him in such a vulnerable state. 

He goes to the kitchen and grabs his phone, opening up his text messages.  _ Soup’s on  _ he sends to Peter, hoping the boy’s phone is both on vibrate and on his person. 

His hopes are answered quickly when he hears footsteps above not a few seconds later, Peter going into the bathroom for a few minutes before showing up at the table, eyeing the pan of chicken and rice before sitting down across from Tony.

They stare at each other for a beat before Tony motions to the pan, only for Peter to surprise him. In a voice just a tiny bit louder than usual he says, “I can’t hear anything.”

Tony freezes, carefully watching the way Peter is warily observing him, as though braced for some long emotional talk. Ironic, Tony thinks grimly, since a real conversation would take a bit more doing to achieve than either of them are used to.

“I know,” Tony finally replies, speaking the words just a beat slower than normal to make sure Peter has time to read his lips. The kid doesn’t say anything else, but he does look slightly relieved when he grabs the ladle for the rice off the tabletop and begins adding heaps of it to his plate—Tony using tongs to serve them both the chicken.

The rest of the meal proceeds in silence. Tony watches Peter closely while pretending he’s not watching him at all—not that it seems to matter, as the kid keeps his own eyes firmly fixed on his plate. The carefully blank expression on his face reminds Tony all too much of that night in the hospital in Pennsylvania—Tony finding himself pondering for the thousandth time how in the world Peter, without any senses whatsoever, had made it out of that bunker and stumbled miles through the forest. He’d made it to safety, made it  _ home,  _ and yet.

Seeing his mentee now, Tony can’t help but think that while Peter would recover physically from this ordeal, if he didn’t manage to find a way to get through to the kid soon… emotionally speaking, well.

It might be like he never escaped those woods at all.


	2. Chapter 2

When Peter comes downstairs the next morning and says “hey Tony” first thing, Tony breathes a sigh of relief. But the respite is short-lived, as not a few minutes later he turns down breakfast with an aborted shake of his head. Tony has never once seen the kid refuse freshly-made pancakes, and right away he knows that one lost sense has been replaced with another.

“My mint toothpaste tasted like cardboard,” Peter explains with a shrug when Tony directly asks, quickly disappearing out of the room before he can make a case for the kid having a stack anyway.

Four hours later finds Tony walking into the living room carrying a plate of sandwiches. “Pete, I don’t care if it tastes like straw. You’re going to eat it.”

Peter is sitting on a pillow with his back up against the couch, immersed in some mano-a-mano video game he convinced FRIDAY to download for him that Tony doesn’t recognize. When he doesn’t respond Tony adds, “We both know skipping a meal makes for a cranky spiderling, and May will have my head on a platter if she finds out you missed two under my watch.”

The kid doesn’t even look up at him, just keeps fiddling with his controller and groaning whenever the character he’s playing—some large bald guy with sharp teeth and spikes coming out of his shoulders—takes a bad hit from his blond female opponent.

Tony sighs dramatically, setting down the plate on the carpet next to the kid only to make the mistake of sticking around and watching the rest of the match. His jaw drops when Peter’s guy rips the face off the woman only to start chomping into her brain.

“What the hell is this game?” he asks just as a deep voice on the screen says “FATALITY” and declares Peter the winner.

“Mortal Kombat,” Peter replies distractedly—already queueing up another match. 

“Nope, no way. FRIDAY, turn it off,” Tony orders, the TV going dark. 

Peter finally spares him a glance, scowling. “Hey! I was playing that!”

“And if I have to witness even one more second of it we’d _both_ lose our appetites, and I for one spent way too much time getting the homemade avocado mash just right to let it go to waste.”

“Why? It’s not like I can taste it anyway,” Peter grumbles, although Tony is glad to see him pick up one of the subs and take a small bite. He makes a show of chewing and swallowing before giving Tony an exaggerated smile. “See? I’m eating. Can I please go back to playing now?”

“You know, it’s a really nice day outside,” Tony replies conversationally, sitting down on the couch, the side of his knee just barely brushing the kid’s shoulder. “Whad’ya say we go for a short hike?”

His brow furrows at the shadow that passes over the kid’s face. “No thanks.”

“Are you sure?” Tony presses. “May thought it’d be good for you to get outside while you’re here, instead of staying cooped up in–”

“I said _no thanks,”_ Peter interjects forcefully. A mix of the concern and confusion Tony feels must show in his expression because Peter’s own face softens in apology as he adds, “Can I please just go back to my game? Please, Tony.”

Tony chews the inside of his cheek. He really doesn’t think that Peter distracting himself with brutal video games is going to help him deal with whatever it is he refuses to talk about—including why the kid is suddenly so vehemently opposed to going outside—but Tony can’t exactly force him to bare his soul either. After all, it’s not like he himself is the poster child of healthy emotional outlets. Better than he used to be—before Peter and then Morgan came along—certainly, but he’s plenty aware he’s still watching the world through glass walls in that regard.

“Sure, kid,” he agrees, not missing the way Peter’s lips turn up slightly in gratitude as he turns back to his game and picks up his controller. Tony claps him once on the shoulder, briefly squeezing before letting go and standing up. He pauses in the doorway, pointing a finger at the sandwiches. “I want to see that plate empty in the next half hour, got it?” 

“Got it,” Peter repeats dully, eyes already glazed over as he stares at the TV.

Tony rolls his eyes, then goes in search of his tablet where the newest season of _The Great British Bake Off_ sits on Netflix, just waiting for him. After all, if the kid is allowed to beg off enjoying the great outdoors in lieu of screen time, he figures he’s entitled to the same.

* * *

Tony wakes to the shadows of tree branches dancing in the moonlight across his bedroom ceiling. For a moment he just stares, taking a deep breath and wondering what woke him. He has a vague half-memory of hearing–

“May! Tony! Help me!”

Tony bolts upright at the terrified shout, pushing back his covers and quickly heading out of the room and down the hallway. 

“Help! Someone help!”

“Pete?” he says, knocking on the kid’s door loudly. He nearly decides to hell with it and bursts in, but just manages to stop himself. The kid is seventeen, not seven, and he has a right to his privacy no matter how much Tony means well. Through the door he calls out, “Wake up, kid! It’s just a nightmare.”

There’s a strangled cry on the other side followed by silence, though when Tony strains he can just barely make out the kid’s harsh breathing. 

“Pete?” he tries again. “Can I come in?”

“Y-yeah,” comes the soft reply, and with a small sigh of relief Tony opens the door and sticks his head in.

“You doing okay?” he gently asks.

“It’s all dark,” Peter says, voice low. Tony thinks he hears a soft sniffle in there.

“Well, yeah. It’s the middle of the night,” Tony says lightly, opening the door all the way and padding over to the kid’s bed. He fumbles for the knob of the side table lamp. “Here, just lemme—ah, there we go. Better?”

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust but when they do he almost wishes they hadn’t. Peter’s own eyes are red-rimmed, but worse—they’re aimed just off-center of Tony’s face, wide and wild but catching on nothing.

“Oh,” Tony says dumbly. “You really meant _all_ dark, huh?”

Peter takes a slow, steadying breath, one that just barely trembles at the end. “Yeah.”

Tony scrubs a hand over his face, wondering what he should do, not even bothering to hide his uncertainty. Not like Peter can see it anyway. Finally he lands on, “Well, the good news is that just like I said, it’s the middle of the night.” He leans down again to turn off the lamp. “So if you go back to sleep I bet by the morning your sight will be–”

A hand darts out and clasps around his wrist just as he’s about to twist the knob, and Tony stills. For a moment he thinks Peter’s vision might have already returned, but when he glances over the kid is still staring off into some invisible middle distance, gaze unfocused. 

“Can”—Peter swallows, biting his lip before plowing on—”actually, can you stay for a few minutes? And just… just talk to me, or whatever?”

“Sure,” Tony says right away. He waits for Peter to let go of his wrist—swatting at the kid’s thigh lightly as he says, “I’m gonna sit here, so you move the leg.”

The kid’s lips turn up, amusement briefly overtaking the distress. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re really bossy?” he snarks, though he shifts his hips over to make room all the same.

“Morgan, everyday for the last five years,” Tony quips, plopping down. Once again he takes a few moments to consider how best to approach things. Might as well just jump in headfirst. “So, you want to tell me what that nightmare was about?”

And just like that, the kid’s expression shutters. “Not really, no.”

Tony replies with a low hum, making sure to add a note of mild disapproval at the end—not wanting to raise Peter’s hackles, but still hoping he gets the message. If the way the kid’s jaw just set is any indication, he understood Tony quite clearly. 

“So, what do you want to talk about?”

Peter closes his eyes, putting an arm over his face. “I dunno. Tell me a story from your past.” Then, before Tony can make the predictable wisecrack about how very few things from his past are age-appropriate, adds, “Something _not_ straight out of the tabloids. Something about… Pepper. How you met her, or whatever.”

“Oh, now there’s a story,” Tony says approvingly. “One that makes Pepper look like the goddess she always has been and will be, and me like the unworthy schlub I was and mostly still am.”

Peter chuckles. “Do I even want to know?”

“Too late, you already asked,” Tony dryly replies, smirking. “So the night before had been SI’s annual executive Christmas party, and needless to say, I was a hungover mess the next morning. And since my PA before Pep had quit on the spot a week earlier, I had nobody to get me out of bed on time for the slew of interviews Obie’s PA had scheduled for the day. Pepper was first, at 9am sharp if I remember correctly.”

“Let me guess. You overslept?”

“You’re damn right I did. Showed up to my office forty-five minutes late, just as she was putting on her jacket and scarf, and honestly Pete, you should have seen the look she gave me when I walked in wearing sunglasses and looking all scruffy and shabby. The pure _disgust_ as she eyed me up and down. It’s a wonder I didn’t fall in love with her right then and there.”

A genuine laugh this time. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t get a chance to say anything,” Tony admits. “I barely started to stammer out an excuse when she interrupted and told me in no small way how I’d wasted her time, how if I didn’t think she had better things to do than wait for _the great and charming Tony Stark_ to make an appearance I was wrong, and that if I still wanted to interview her—which she was certain wouldn’t be the case but she was past caring—that she was available the next Tuesday at two o’clock, and not a moment sooner.”

“Woah,” Peter said, raising his arm from his face to pin Tony—or well, Tony’s shoulder—with an impressed gaze. “Go Pepper. What happened then?”

“Then I called Obie’s PA and told her to cancel the rest of the interviews, and to call Pepper and arrange an appointment for the following Tuesday at two.”

“And she showed?”

“She did, though she had cooled off a bit from our first encounter.” Tony shakes his head fondly. “As soon as she started to apologize for her outburst I slid a manila folder that contained her hiring offer and a bunch of other HR paperwork across the table and said, ‘Miss Potts, the job’s yours if you want it.’ Three days later she was officially my PA, and the rest is history.”

“Wait, I don’t get it,” Peter says with a long yawn. “Why’d you still wanna hire her if she yelled at you like that?”

“Good question,” Tony replies with a shrug. “If I’m honest, I think it’s because I knew she wouldn’t put up with my shit for long if it really came down to it. Rhodey and Hap are the same way too. I didn’t have many friends back then, but the ones I did have… I could count on them to set me straight when I couldn’t always count on myself.”

“Tha’ makes sense,” Peter mumbles, and Tony sees his eyes are closed now. He can’t imagine it’s easy to stay awake if you’re tired and not used to everything being pitch black all the time. “Kinda like how Ned’n’MJ…”

Peter trails off, breaths slowly evening out. Tony waits thirty seconds before carefully starting to stand up, only for a hand to grip his wrist tightly for the second time that night. 

“Stay? Jus’ a bit longer. ‘S lonely when I’m…”

It’s only because Peter can’t see Tony’s face that he lets his emotions fully bleed into his features, reaching out and gently ruffling the kid’s hair with his free hand before sitting back down. “How about I tell you about the day I met Happy? _Also_ the day he got his nickname, as it turns out.”

Tony keeps talking long after Peter drifts off, stories shifting seamlessly from meeting Hap to being introduced to Rhodey, and then to the evening Morgan was born. He knows the kid is asleep but finds himself hoping that his voice might help keep the nightmares at bay—that it would be a real source of comfort to Peter’s subconscious, even lost to the dark.

If it helps it’s not for long, as Tony is eventually interrupted by a small whimper—glancing over to see Peter’s brow is starting to twist up, a nightmare on the verge of breaking into his peaceful slumber. As gently as he can he unclasps the kid’s fingers from around his wrist and carefully turns Peter’s hand so it rests atop his own. Slowly he begins to rub circles into the kid’s palm, the way he used to do with baby Morgan when he’d go check on her in her crib—having had his own nightmares of his daughter turning to dust before his very eyes the same way the boy beside him now had done.

He smiles when the whimpers die down, Peter’s forehead smoothing as he drifts back to a place safe from the recent experiences that seem to constantly plague him.

“I wish you’d talk to me, Pete,” he finds himself whispering sorrowfully as he gently rests the kid’s arm across his stomach before quietly standing up. He brushes Peter’s bangs back once before turning off the lamp and walking to the doorway, pausing in the threshold. "All you gotta do is talk and I’ll listen. I promise.”

A soft snore is all the answer he gets. With a tired sigh, Tony lets the door click shut.

* * *

“I don’t know how to reach him, Hap,” Tony tells his friend two days later over the phone. Peter is in the living room playing his video game again, and even just the audio is nauseatingly horrid enough to send Tony out onto the porch to make what he hopes will be an overlooked call by the teen. “His sense of taste disappeared again last night and then I caught the kid at three in the morning in the kitchen, pouring half a bottle of tabasco on a plate of scrambled eggs. Barely said a word to me before he trashed the food and ran back upstairs. He utterly refuses to talk about anything to do with the kidnapping or even what he’s going through right now. I swear, I’m at my wit’s end.”

“You know better than anyone that something like this isn’t going to be fixed overnight, Tony,” Happy reminds him. “But also, you two and May have been down this road before. He’ll open up eventually, just like he did about the warehouse collapse and again about dying on Titan. He always does.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tony says with a long sigh. “I just don’t know if waiting him out is going to be enough this time.”

“Well, then you gotta figure out a way to relate to him. Find common ground with what he’s going through, something more specific and deeper than _hey kid, so despite being a billionaire with access to the best healthcare in the world I allowed myself to suffer from barely treated PTSD for years, which nearly blew up some of the most important relationships in my life—not to mention led me down a path of self-destruction—and since I really don’t want you to be Iron Man 2.0 in that regard you better hurry up and spill your guts, underoos.”_

“Wow, Hap,” Tony deadpans. “Tell me what you really think.”

“Just callin’ it like it is, boss,” Happy replies without even a hint of shame. “Anyway, my point stands. You gotta figure out how to relate to him with what he’s actually going through right _now.”_

“And how can I possibly do that? It’s not like I’ve ever been–” Tony cuts himself off, eyes going wide. “Wait, I got an–”

“Idea,” Happy finishes for him. “And let me guess, you’re probably gonna need a–”

“Favor, you’re absolutely correct. What do you say to hanging out with Pete tomorrow? There’s something I need to try.”


	3. Chapter 3

The Avengers training facility at the compound is quiet when Tony arrives the next day. He’d specifically instructed FRIDAY not to let the others know he had made the trip—not because he wanted to avoid them, exactly, but rather because he did not want to be disturbed for what he was about to do. As for Peter, it hadn’t been hard to hide his plans from the kid when said kid hadn’t even asked why he needed to head out for the day—instead grumbling something about not needing a babysitter when Happy coming out came up. But Tony saw right through that, even getting a smile out of the teen when he’d grumbled right back about how he better not return to find any pranks had been planned while he’d been gone—shuddering at the memory of the 17th century replica antique guillotine they’d made together behind his back the month before. Despite all Tony’s efforts he never quite got those ketchup stains out of his shirt, nor the years back of his life he’d lost at the shock of thinking he’d just seen Peter literally lose his head.

Tony knew that there was no way he could truly mimic the horror Peter must have endured those days he was wholly without his senses. At least, not unless Tony felt like shooting himself up with a toxin that might very well kill a non-enhanced being like himself. But there  _ was _ one way to simulate the same effects. Namely, the isolation tank in the physical therapy room. 

Why Steve had added it to the new facility and then kept it maintained, Tony wasn’t sure. After all, the only person who had used the tank in the old compound had been Natasha. At the time he could only figure it was out of some mix of nostalgia and grief on the Captain’s part. Now, however, he could only be belatedly grateful that Steve had made the purchase.

While Tony knew that isolation tanks were used as a form of therapy, for the life of him he’d never seen the appeal. Now, stepping into the tank in his swim shorts, he finds himself even less interested than ever—in fact, nearly apprehensive. 

But for Peter, he has to try.

Carefully he lays down in the water—only ten inches deep but packed with enough Epsom salt that he floats effortlessly in it—and with one last look at the bright fluorescent lights of the PT room, he pulls the tank lid closed.

Immediately he’s ensconced in pitch black, but what really gets his attention isn’t the darkness, it’s the lack of sound. He’s been swimming before, had his ears drowned out by water as they are now, but even then, this is different. There’s no muffled noises, not even his breathing can be heard—the tank’s inner walls built to absorb even the largest of soundwaves. 

At first it wasn’t so bad, Tony’s mind simply taking in the sensations—or lack thereof. And maybe in another life, it would have been relaxing, therapeutic even, as it apparently had been for Natasha and still was for many others. But this wasn’t another life, and things soon took a quick downturn. 

Floating there in the silent dark, trapped in a tank, it dawns on Tony all at once that he feels completely out of touch with the outer world. Which only leaves space to do one thing: think about himself. And alone in his mind, considering his own life, with absolutely no stimuli—well, it wasn’t relaxing. Not when he was also out of touch with his own body. 

His  _ own body,  _ which he also couldn’t feel any longer—as though it had been stolen away and separated from his brain, all nerve endings carved out of his lobes. He tries to flex his fingers but even that feels like nothing, like doing nothing, like being  _ nothing. _

Tony’s never felt so detached before, and only rarely so at mercy. And all it takes is that one realization for terrifying memories long pushed down soar to the forefront of his mind against his will—all the times in recent memory when he’d been made acutely aware of his helplessness and limitations.

_ Waking up in a cave, in the worst pain of his life during open chest surgery, only to pass out again from the sheer horror... _

_ Walking through the desert, thirsty beyond all measure and certain he was going to was marching nowhere but to his inevitable death... _

_ Going through the wormhole, and then blacking out as the bomb blew—certain that it would be the last thing he ever saw... _

_ Dying of palladium poisoning and have no choice but to accept the inevitable... _

_ Seeing Happy in a coma and knowing in his bones that it was his fault for failing to protect his friend, no matter who he publicly blamed... _

_ JARVIS shorting out on him just off a highway on a cold night in Tennessee... _

_ Pepper falling into the fire... _

_ Rhodey falling from the sky.... _

_ The look of true sadness—but no real regret—in Steve’s eyes when he admitted his deep betrayal, how he’d chosen his old best friend over his new one... _

_ Peter begging for his help... _

_ Peter dying in his arms... _

_ Floating hopelessly through space in a dying ship, just like he was floating now, never finding peace again, dying without knowing if his loved ones were alive, just floating and floating and floating and– _

Tony bolts up and slams the lid of the tank wide open, breaths coming hard and fast and heaving. There’s a pressure in his chest that won’t let up and even though he wasn’t even fully immersed he feels like he had been just drowning, unable to get any air, unable to do  _ anything.  _

Distantly he realizes he’s having a panic attack, and with shaky limbs he hauls himself out of the tub—landing on the ground of the PT room with a  _ thump.  _ Dripping wet and feeling entirely all too exposed despite being alone, Tony closes his eyes and tries to force himself to focus.

Only his old techniques—ones he hadn’t had need of in years up until now—keep it from getting worse. He doesn’t know how long it is after that he opens his eyes again, looking around the room before glancing back up at the tank warily.

“FRIDAY?”

“Yes, boss?”

Still trembly from the leftover adrenaline, he scrubs a hand over his face. “How long was I in there?”

“Seven minutes, boss.”

_ “What?” _

Shock doesn’t begin to describe Tony’s response to that revelation. It had felt like hours—how had it only been minutes? And god, if that’s what it had been like for him, then what had it been like for Peter—Peter, who had enhanced senses, who felt, heard, saw everything a hundred times more than a normal mortal—to endure actual, real,  _ true _ sensory loss for  _ days _ ?

It’s unfathomable to even conceive of after what the hell Tony just went through, and suddenly he understands far better than he ever could have imagined why Peter had been so withdrawn, so quiet, so unwilling to dwell on such a harrowing ordeal.

Tony understands and yet at the same time—he has more conviction than ever that he can’t let Peter go on like this indefinitely. He has to get through to the kid.

Yet he can only hope that from now on, he’ll have a better grasp on how to help when the right opportunity presents itself.

* * *

As it turns out, the right opportunity proves to be quite difficult to find. After what ended up being a very uneventful day senses-wise for Peter—leading to him excitedly telling Tony he thought he was cured before he had hardly gotten out of the car—the kid had lost his smell  _ and  _ hearing that same night. Even if they could have had a proper conversation at that point, Peter had been far too withdrawn for one. The sullen mood had continued even after the two senses returned, the kid hardly grunting in response to anything Tony said. He wasn’t hurt by it—he knew the signs of deep inner turmoil too well to be, plus he had a five year-old whose moods swung far wider than Peter’s possibly could—but as the next few days passed it did make him steadily more concerned that he’d run out of time before they had to leave to really  _ talk  _ with the kid.

But then, on their sixth day at the cabin, it lands right at Tony’s feet—but only right after Peter does first.

They’re in the kitchen cleaning up after lunch. Tony’s on dish-washing duty, while Peter dries and puts everything away in the various cupboards and drawers. The kid has just moved out of his sight with their drinking glasses when he hears Peter yelp suddenly—twisting around just in time to see the kid’s knees hit the floor, the two glasses falling out of his grip and rolling away.

“Pete, you alright?” Tony asks, concerned. Peter doesn’t answer, just stays on the floor on all fours, but Tony doesn’t miss the way his fingers dig into the wood, nor the way his limbs start to tremble. He carefully grabs Peter’s shoulders and starts to yank him up when the kid makes a snarling sound. 

“Don’t,” he grits out, and Tony freezes, only to finally put it together. 

“Is it your sense of touch?” he asks, then when Peter doesn’t answer, starts to pull him back up again. He manages to get the kid upright, but Peter doesn’t so much as look at him—his whole body now shaking with tremors as he slowly raises a hand to his face and touches it.

“I can’t—I can’t–”

“Hey bud, it’s okay,” Tony is quick to reassure, stretching a hand out so it hovers over Peter’s shoulder—unsure if any further touch would be unwelcome when the kid can’t even feel it. “How about we go sit on the couch, huh? We can watch some TV until it passes. Listen Pete, everything’s going to be—”

“Stop! Just stop it!” Peter yells then, before jerking away from Tony and toward the sliding glass doors that lead to the porch. He stumbles again—Tony assuming he’s only managing to walk at all due to muscle memory— and just barely catches himself on a counter with an arm.

“Kid,” Tony tries, “here, let me just–”

“You can’t help!” Peter cries. “Nobody can help! You don’t get it, none of you get it, you don’t–”

The kid cuts himself off when he reaches the doors. It takes him four tries before his fingers catch on the latch, and he slams the door open hard enough that Tony thinks it’s a wonder the glass doesn’t crack. 

Tony watches helplessly as Peter staggers outside, pausing only long enough to slam the door closed behind him with one hand while he holds himself up with the other, before he lurches out of sight—Tony hearing the sound of one of the porch chair’s legs scrape against the wooden floor as Peter presumably falls into it before everything goes silent.

Tony stands there in the kitchen, rubbing the back of his neck a few times as he considers his options. Eventually he goes to pick up the glasses, putting them away and returning to the remaining dishes. As soon as everything is cleaned and put away, he goes into the living room and grabs a blanket—it is still early spring, after all, and the kid went out there without shoes or a jacket—and heads for the porch.

As expected, Peter is sitting in the furthest chair from the doors. He doesn’t look at Tony as he comes outside, eyes wet and staring out at the lake instead, although it doesn’t look like any tears have fallen either. 

As casually as he can Tony walks over, draping the blanket over Peter and tucking it all around him before plopping down in the chair next to him. Together they sit in silence, Tony waiting for Peter to say something and release the tension first. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“I’m not sure why you brought the blanket. I can’t even feel the cold right now.”

“Maybe you can’t, but your body feels the effects,” Tony replies lightly. “Also I gotta say, walking when you can’t feel your legs? Talking when you can’t feel your lips? That’s pretty damn impressive, Pete.”

“It’s not like paralysis,” Peter says quietly after a few moments. “More like a total numbness. My body can still obey what I tell it to do, it’s just really uncoordinated.”

The two of them sit quietly again, listening to the waves lapping against the shore. 

After a minute or two, Tony clears his throat. “Y’know, I once designed a weapon that could induce paralysis.”

Peter turns to look at Tony, surprise evident in his gaze. “You did?”

“Only temporarily, but it packed a punch,” Tony clarifies. “It was a hand-held device I called a sonic taser. You put it just inches from the back of someone’s neck, and with the right frequency depending on their size they’d be rendered unable to so much as twitch.”

Peter continues to stare. “No offense, Tony, but that’s some serious Dark Arts shit.”

Tony smirks, chuckling grimly as he looks back toward the beach. “Yeah, the federal government thought so too. Wouldn’t touch ‘em after they got a demonstration. But you know who did keep one of the prototypes? Obie. It’s how he was able to steal my arc reactor right out of my chest back in ‘08.”

“Right out of your  _ chest?” _ Peter exclaims, eyes wide.

“Yup.” Tony grimaces at the memory of Obie’s cold words that night. “Up to that point I don’t think I’d ever felt so helpless and scared before, except maybe when I woke up mid-surgery in the cave. My whole body felt like it didn’t belong to me, and long after Obie was dead I still had nightmares about it—about being alone and trapped but in my own flesh and bones. It’s part of why I got so obsessed with adding absolutely every single gadget and trick I could think of to my suits, and eventually yours.” He pauses, biting the inside of his cheek as he turns to face Peter again, who is still staring back at him intently. “What I’m trying to say, Pete, is that I know I’ll never really understand what you went through. But if you want to talk, I’m here, not just because I care about you but because I know what it’s like to feel helpless in your own body or at least”—he taps at his chest right over his arc reactor scar with two fingers—”how it feels to be tethered to something that’s a physical part of you, that’s  _ sacred _ to you, but that gets violently ripped away anyhow.” Another long pause. “So I really hope you choose to talk to me, or if not me then someone else. Because I gotta say, it’s really damn hard to watch one of the two kids who carries what might as well be my actual beating heart around, struggle on his own when he doesn’t have to.”

With a sniff Tony turns away to stare out across the lake once more, trying to give off a casual vibe even as he waits impatiently for Peter to respond. But as the minutes pass and the kid doesn’t say anything, Tony feels his hope fall again—knowing that if  _ that  _ speech didn’t get through to Peter, nothing else Tony could possibly say will. 

“They didn’t even tie me up.”

Tony looks back at Peter, who for his part is fixated on his lap. He keeps his voice carefully neutral as he says, “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Peter replies, jaw working. “I guess they were _that_ certain I wouldn’t get out, and the first couple days—now that I even knew it was just days, it felt like weeks or even months—I guess they were right not to. ‘Cause I was so lost in my… my own head, that I didn’t even think of trying to get away from wherever I was.” He takes a deep breath, looking up at Tony with tears in his eyes. “I tried so hard to be strong, Tony… but—my danger sense, or spidey sense or whatever you want to call it—it _never_ went away. It was like this constant buzzing in my mind, telling me to run one moment then be still the next, back and forth and back and forth and it wasn’t making any sense? It was like it wanted me to stay and go at the same time. It wouldn’t even let me sleep. And it wasn’t until the day I escaped that I realized… it was trying to tell me to get out of _myself._ And when I figured that out, and I knew it wasn’t something I could fix, well…” Peter shrugs. “I guess that’s when I finally found the edges of my body and started to fight my way out. I still don’t really remember it, but it was like—one moment I was trapped, and the next I just _knew_ I was outside. And I just kept walking and walking and I guess my sixth sense knew well enough to help me find help because eventually it led me back to you guys. But… now it’s like it’s confused, or something.”

Tony’s brow furrows. “Confused?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Peter admits. “But that same buzzing to get out of my own skin keeps coming back at random times, even when I have all my senses. Even when I’m  _ sleeping. _ And the woods”—Peter raises a hand, motioning to the forest and beyond—”it seems to hate those too, I can’t even think about going near them without this terror taking me over. I’m just so  _ tired  _ of being scared, but…” He trails off, sniffling and wiping at his face as best he can manage with numb fingers. “I don’t know what to do about it, or how to fix it. Even when I know I should feel safe I don’t, because… because I don’t know what to trust anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Pete,” Tony whispers as soon as he realizes the kid is done talking, feeling gutted by his words. “I had no idea.”

“It’s okay,” Peter replies, wiping at his cheeks clumsily. “But that’s why I didn’t say anything, ‘cause I knew that… that you guys couldn’t help, I guess. And you and May and everyone else, you guys always want to help. And I didn’t know how to give that to you.”

Tony wants so desperately to argue, to say that they  _ could  _ help. But even though it might be at least partly the truth, he finds he can’t. Because what Peter is wrestling with, he knows now, is ultimately a part of himself—something literally coded into his DNA. And while Tony and May and others can listen, it’s Peter alone who will have to find a way through to the other side. But all the same, a vote of confidence couldn’t hurt.

“Listen, kid,” Tony says. “I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but I will say this. I don’t believe for one second that your spidey sense has turned on you. If it’s confused, then that’s probably because you yourself are grappling with what ‘safe’ means for you right now.” Tony moves his hand from Peter’s neck to his shoulder, gripping tightly. “But even if you don’t trust it, I think you still need to try to trust yourself. Try to trust that your instincts will guide you, spidey sense or not. Because no toxin, not even the one that took away your other senses, can take away what you know to be true in your gut.” Tony pulls away, then points a finger at Peter. “So next time that happens, I want you to close your eyes and focus not on what your spidey sense says, but on what  _ you _ feel to be true. Because I bet once you start trusting you again—just Peter Parker’s regular instincts—the spidey sense will fall back in line.”

“You really think so?” Peter says hopefully.

“I do,” Tony replies, putting as much conviction into his tone as he can muster. 

Peter nods silently in response, eyes flitting back in his lap, as if considering something. Tony waits patiently, feeling greatly relieved the kid had finally opened up even if it hurt his heart to hear at times. 

It’s only when more than ten minutes have passed and Tony feels a shiver of cold up his spine that he finally says, “It’s pretty chilly out, Pete. What do you say we go back–”

“If I propose a possibly really crazy idea, do you promise not to say no?” Peter interjects, a small smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Depends,” Tony slowly replies. “Are we talking the so-crazy-it’s-truly-asinine kind of idea, or the so-crazy-it’s-actually-secretly-genius kind?” 

The smirk lifts into a genuine smile. 

* * *

Tony sits on a stump by Morgan’s play tent, nervous and twitchy. He had tried first staying inside the cabin, and then inside the porch, but not being able to see the eastern treeline—where he’d last seen Peter before he’d disappeared from view—had made him too anxious. Now here he is staring out into the woods, wishing far too late he’d pushed harder for Peter to at least wear a smartwatch for Tony to track his vitals and location with. But Peter had insisted that he needed to do the entire thing alone—that having any tech whatsoever would defeat the purpose—and at the time, Tony had reluctantly agreed.

Now, what had seemed like a “so-crazy-it’s-actually-secretly-genius” plan didn’t feel so brilliant. Not when Peter still hadn’t emerged after disappearing into the forest over four hours earlier with the plan to  _ literally  _ get lost miles away and then try to find his way home again—all while wearing his special noise-canceling headphones, having a blindfold covering his eyes, and when he still hadn’t recovered his sense of touch.

There was less than an hour until sunset, which was when they’d agreed Tony was allowed to call the cavalry at the compound to begin an overhead search-and-rescue. And while Peter might survive that ordeal in the end, there was  _ no way _ Tony would survive the wrath of May Parker.

And so it is that Tony’s foot is tapping so rapidly and loudly against the dirt and grass that he nearly misses the twig snapping somewhere out of sight. He stands up and stares into the darkening treeline, nearly sitting back down again when there’s no movement and stewing once more in his worry when he spots it out of the corner of his eye—a figure emerging from the northern edge.

Tony couldn’t feel more proud as he watches Peter enter the yard, hands out in front of him but otherwise seemingly relaxed, and still wearing the headphones and blindfold. The kid walks a few more steps forward before coming to a halt, canting his head to the side as if listening to something. Then in a swift movement he tears off his blindfold, a blinding smile taking over his features when he spots Tony waiting for him just yards away.

“I did it!” Peter exclaims, pulling off his headphones and walking right into Tony’s arms for a hug. 

“You sure did, kid,” Tony replies into his ear, clapping his back and giving him a second tight squeeze before letting go. “How’d it go?”

“You were right,” Peter says with a shake of his head, still grinning. “I just let some weird mix of my gut and my danger sense lead me, and it brought me back here. Barely even stumbled the whole way.” His face turns pensive. “I still don’t get how it knew where to take me, but it did.”

“Well, if staying in the forest is technically a danger, and this is the closest place of safety, it’s possible that your sixth sense was just following where your gut told you you needed to be,” Tony hypothesizes. “But what really matters is that you trusted yourself, and you let that guide you.” 

Peter’s smile softens. “Yeah, I guess I did. Thanks, Tony.”

Feeling a surge of pride and love, Tony puts an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “Murdock’s got nothing on you, Pete.”

“Who?”

Tony waves a hand dismissively. “Not important. Let’s find something to eat, shall we?”

Together they head inside the warm cabin, leaving the darkness of the woods behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love <3 Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://blondsak.tumblr.com).


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